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Apr 9, 2010

I always say that for the most part, I'm pretty open to most movies. I try not to limit myself to certain genres too much although I draw the line with Westerns, and a few others that don't come to mind right now. There's just so much to be liked about movies in general, so why close the doors to potential entertainment or sometimes even artistic fulfillment.

But it doesn't mean that I love all genres of movies equally. For example, I do really badly with horror / suspense movies (which my partner loves) and I tend to greatly favor action movies of the science fiction persuasion while not overly being drawn to buddy cop stuff. I dunno, I guess I'm too forward-facing or something like that and serious contemporary stories don't vet me overly excited although contemporary comedies tend to work.

As you can see, it's next to impossible for me to set down actual "rules" of sorts as to what movies I may or may not like, or at the very least what movies I'll put effort and resources into seeing but there are some sort of set of unspoken rules out there in the infinite reaches of my mind.

This was one of those movies that didn't register on my raday, but I'm thankful that my partner brought it to my attention.

RocknRolla is an interesting 2008 movie by Guy Ritchie, who has a tendency to favor rather witty yet violent movies. Well, maybe violent isn't the best term for it - he tends to like guns but it doesn't mean he favors a lot of gore. Well, not all the time, at least. Whatever.

The story takes place in a town where all major realty deals are influenced by local crime boss Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson). Now when a Russian real estate mogul comes into town, he has to make a deal with Lenny and Lenny plans on milking him for all he's worth. Now this money is going to be transferred over through their accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), who in turn contracts a group of petty thieves known as the Wild Bunch (Gerard Butler as One Two and Idris Elba as Mumbles) to intercept the money before it gets transferred to Lenny.

And if that sounds like a spoiler-y summary, it's not. This was the opening setup that you'll get within the first 10-15 minutes of the movie, and then some. I had to gloss over a few more plot points since talking about them would snowball into me talking about even more of the movie and all that. So yeah, that's enough of a synopsis.

The movie is quirky, witty and pretty frenetic in its own right, which really is a mark of a Guy Ritchie movie when you think about it. Plus it actually was rather funny whether it's just about the humor in the situations or the comedic writing inherent in the dialog. Plus the actors were able to handle the situations very well and were able to execute the comedic aspect to things quite well. I guess it helped that it wasn't as violent as some other Guy Ritchie movies, but it still works out.

The strength of the whole piece really how well thought-of the characters were. Whether it's the particularly menacing right hand man, Archy (Mark Strong) or the more-complex-than-he-initially-appears-to-be Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy). Okay, okay, even I was a sucker for Handsome Bob. The point is, the characters just worked and even if to some extent they may seem rather over-the-top or too extreme, combined they still made sense and together as an ensemble they really came together well.

RocknRolla is one of the best Guy Ritchie movies that I've ever seen and it gets 4 lucky paintings out of a possible 5.